“Our study demonstrates the high sensitivity of [gallium Ga-68 dotatate] in the localization of [ectopic Cushing’s syndrome], for both occult primary tumors and metastatic lesions,” the researchers wrote. “Importantly, the use of [gallium Ga-68 dotatate] impacted clinical management in 64% of patients with [ectopic Cushing’s syndrome] overall.” The researche […]

The 11th annual Pituitary Day will take place on October 19, 2019 Patients living with pituitary disorders can hear lectures from our pituitary specialists, see movies of pituitary surgeries and hear from other patients about their experience living with pituitary disease and undergoing surgery.

Cynthia is from Ruckersville, VA. She is testing for Cushing's due to many symptoms. tested for CD because after exhaustive research on AVN (Avascular Necrosis) related to other diseases. I have four known areas of AVN & after seeing the symptoms of CD, I realized may have this. I also have numerous other diseases Lupus, Sojgrens, Hypothyroid, High […]

Today is the Thirteenth Anniversary of my kidney cancer surgery. These thirteen years have been bonus years for me. For my cancer stage, the 5-year survival rate was 81% and I’ve made it more than twice that long – so far.

Kathy was diagnosed with a pituitary tumor in 1991. At the time the only symptom she was aware of was a severe headache. She had a transsphenoidal resection followed by radiation therapy for 23 days. They said they could not remove all of the tumor.

Sadly, we lost another Cushing’s patient on Friday, May 9, 2014. Melinda was a member of the Cushing’s Help message boards since Jun 24, 2007. She was only 25 and left behind a young son and many loving family members.

He died of a presumed heart attack. September 19, 2015 he said "'I was diagnosed hypertensive way back when I was 20. The condition remained for years, and became more acute with my cushings pit tumor. I still have high blood pressure, partially teated with three meds. I'll have to consult my doc and see if this may also be an issue."

'My name is Caroline and I dont post often but have met a few of you guys and read the board regularly, it has definitely been a godsend to cushies everywhere. The reason I am writing tonight is I have just received devastating information about a dear friend of mine, and a woman some of you may have met during testing. Her name is Kathryn Miller and sh […]

Adrenal incidentalomas (AI) are asymptomatic masses in the adrenal glands discovered on an imaging test ordered for a problem unrelated to adrenal disease. While most of these benign tumors are considered non-functioning, meaning they do not produce steroid hormones like cortisol, up to 30% do produce and secrete steroids.

Subclinical Cushing’s syndrome is an asymptomatic condition characterized by mild cortisol excess without the specific signs of Cushing’s syndrome. The long-term exposure to excess cortisol may lead to cardiovascular problems in these patients.

While non-functioning adenomas have been linked with metabolic problems, guidelines say that if excess cortisol is ruled out after the first evaluation, patients no longer need additional follow-up.

However, cortisol secretion can be cyclic in Cushing’s syndrome, meaning that clinicians might not detect excess amounts of cortisol at first and misdiagnose patients.

In an attempt to determine whether cyclic cortisol production is also seen in patients with subclinical Cushing’s syndrome and whether these patients have a higher risk for metabolic complications, researchers in Brazil reviewed the medical records of 251 patients with AI — 186 women, median 60 years old — followed from 2006 to 2017 in a single reference center.

Cortisol levels were measured after a dexamethasone suppression test (DST). Dexamethasone is used to stop the adrenal glands from producing cortisol. In healthy patients, this treatment is expected to reduce cortisol levels, but in patients whose tumors also produce cortisol, the levels often remain elevated.

Patients were diagnosed with cyclic subclinical Cushing’s syndrome if they had at least two normal and two abnormal DST tests.

From the 251 patients, only 44 performed the test at least three times and were included in the analysis. The results showed that 20.4% of patients had a negative DST test and were considered non-functioning adenomas.

An additional 20.4% had elevated cortisol levels in all DST tests and received a diagnosis of sustained subclinical Cushing’s syndrome.

The remaining 59.2% had discordant results in their tests, with 18.3% having at least two positive and two negative test results, matching the criteria for cyclic cortisol production, and 40.9% having only one discordant test, being diagnosed as possibly cyclic subclinical Cushing’s syndrome.

Interestingly, 20 of the 44 patients had a normal cortisol response at their first evaluation. However, 11 of these patients failed to maintain normal responses in subsequent tests, with four receiving a diagnosis of cyclic subclinical Cushing’s syndrome and seven as possibly cyclic subclinical Cushing’s.

Patients with subclinical hypercortisolism, i.e., without symptoms of cortisol overproduction, and adrenal incidentalomas recover their hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function after surgery faster than those with Cushing’s syndrome (CS), according to a study.

Moreover, the researchers found that an HPA function analysis conducted immediately after the surgical removal of adrenal incidentalomas — adrenal tumors discovered by chance in imaging tests — could identify patients in need of glucocorticoid replacement before discharge.

Using this approach, they found that most subclinical patients did not require treatment with hydrocortisone, a glucocorticoid taken to compensate for low levels of cortisol in the body, after surgery.

The HPA axis is the body’s central stress response system. The hypothalamus releases corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) that acts on the pituitary gland to release adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), leading the adrenal gland to produce cortisol.

As the body’s defense mechanism to avoid excessive cortisol secretion, high cortisol levels alert the hypothalamus to stop producing CRH and the pituitary gland to stop making ACTH.

Therefore, in diseases associated with chronically elevated cortisol levels, such as Cushing’s syndrome and adrenal incidentalomas, there’s suppression of the HPA axis.

After an adrenalectomy, which is the surgical removal of one or both adrenal glands, patients often have low cortisol levels (hypocortisolism) and require glucocorticoid replacement therapy.

“Most studies addressing the peri-operative management of patients with adrenal hypercortisolism have reported that irrespective of how mild the hypercortisolism was, such patients were given glucocorticoids before, during and after adrenalectomy,” the researchers wrote.

Evidence also shows that, after surgery, glucocorticoid therapy is administered for months before attempting to test for recovery of HPA function.

For the past 30 years, researchers at the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center have withheld glucocorticoid therapy in the postoperative management of patients with ACTH-secreting pituitary adenomas until there’s proof of hypocortisolism.

“The approach offered us the opportunity to examine peri-operative hormonal alterations and demonstrate their importance in predicting need for replacement therapy, as well as future recurrences,” they said.

In this prospective observational study, the investigators extended their approach to patients with subclinical hypercortisolism.

“The primary goal of the study was to examine rapid alteration in HPA function in patients with presumably suppressed axis and appreciate the modulating impact of surgical stress in that setting,” they wrote. Collected data was used to decide whether to start glucocorticoid therapy.

The analysis included 14 patients with Cushing’s syndrome and 19 individuals with subclinical hypercortisolism and an adrenal incidentaloma. All participants had undergone surgical removal of a cortisol-secreting adrenal tumor.

“None of the patients received exogenous glucocorticoids during the year preceding their evaluation nor were they taking medications or had other illnesses that could inﬂuence HPA function or serum cortisol measurements,” the researchers noted.

Glucocorticoid therapy was not administered before or during surgery.

To evaluate HPA function, the clinical team took blood samples before and at one, two, four, six, and eight hours after the adrenalectomy to determine levels of plasma ACTH, serum cortisol, and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEA-S) — a hormone produced by the adrenal glands.

Pre-surgery assessment of both groups showed that patients with an incidentaloma plus subclinical hypercortisolism had larger adrenal masses, higher ACTH, and DHEA-S levels, but less serum cortisol after adrenal function suppression testing with dexamethasone.

Dexamethasone is a man-made version of cortisol that, in a normal setting, makes the body produce less cortisol. But in patients with a suppressed HPA axis, cortisol levels remain high.

After the adrenalectomy, the ACTH concentrations in both groups of patients increased. This was found to be negatively correlated with pre-operative dexamethasone-suppressed cortisol levels.

Investigators reported that “serum DHEA-S levels in patients with Cushing’s syndrome declined further after adrenalectomy and were undetectable by the 8th postoperative hour,” while incidentaloma patients’ DHEA-S concentrations remained unchanged for the eight-hour postoperative period.

Eight hours after surgery, all Cushing’s syndrome patients had serum cortisol levels of less than 2 ug/dL, indicating suppressed HPA function. As a result, all of these patients required glucocorticoid therapy for several months to make up for HPA axis suppression.

“The decline in serum cortisol levels was slower and less steep [in the incidentaloma group] when compared to that observed in patients with Cushing’s syndrome. At the 6th–8th postoperative hours only 5/19 patients [26%] with subclinical hypercortisolism had serum cortisol levels at ≤3ug/dL and these 5 were started on hydrocortisone therapy,” the researchers wrote.

Replacement therapy in the subclinical hypercortisolism group was continued for up to four weeks.

Results suggest that patients with an incidentaloma plus subclinical hypercortisolism did not have an entirely suppressed HPA axis, as they were able to recover its function much faster than the CS group after surgical stress.

Researchers report a new technique for collecting blood samples from tiny veins of the adrenal glands, called super-selective adrenal venous sampling (ssAVS). The technique can be used to help diagnose diseases marked by excessive release of adrenal hormones, such as subclinical Cushing’s syndrome (SCS) or primary aldesteronism (PA).

The adrenal glands are a pair of glands found above the kidneys that produce a variety of hormones, including adrenaline and the steroids aldosterone and cortisol. Excessive production of cortisol in the adrenal glands is the cause SCS, and aldosterone of PA.

These glands have central veins running through them, and three tributary veins (veins that empty into a larger vein). Conventional AVS collects blood from the central veins, but these veins have blood from the adrenal glands as well as blood in wider circulation flowing through them.

ssAVS uses tiny catheters — very long, narrow tubes inserted into blood vessels, called microcatheters — to collect blood from the tributary veins in both adrenal glands. Only blood from the adrenal glands flows through the tributary veins, making analysis of hormone levels easier, and pinpointing the region, or segment, of the gland that is not working properly.

A medical imaging technique, known as angiography, is used to track the positions of the microcatheters. Angiography is a procedure widely used to visualize the inside of blood vessels and organs, and takes roughly 90 minutes.

The paper reported on the use of ssAVS in three patients with adrenal gland disorders, and one (case #2) was diagnosed with SCS and PA. “Overall, in Cases #1 and #2, the ssAVS method clearly indicated segmental adrenal hormone production, not only for aldosterone, but for cortisol, and enabled these patients to be treated by surgery,” the researchers reported.

Conventional AVS measures hormone levels in whole glands. It is useful for identifying which of the two glands is diseased, and the type of hormone that is overproduced. But sometimes both glands are affected, and only removal of the diseased parts in both glands is safe and effective.

That’s one of the reasons why ssAVS is so useful. By sampling the smaller, tributary veins in three different regions of each gland, the diseased parts can be identified. The diseased parts can then be removed from both glands, if medically advisable, leaving the healthy parts of the glands intact and functional.

ssAVS is also useful because it collects samples of blood coming directly from the adrenal glands, making analysis of hormone levels more reliable.

Researchers concluded that ssAVS is useful in both the diagnosis of adrenal gland disorders and for research that might lead to new therapies.

“Between October 2014 and September 2015, two angiographers … performed ssAVS on 125 cases … with a 100 % success rate and within a reasonable time (58 – 130 min) without adrenal rupture or thrombosis that required surgery,” they wrote. “The ssAVS method is not difficult for expert angiographers, and, thus, is recommended worldwide to treat PA cases for which cAVS does not represent a viable surgical treatment option.”

Preoperative identification of patients with silent adrenocorticotrophic hormone-secreting tumors could potentially change the approach to management. A new study aimed to determine whether a preoperative adrenocorticotrophic hormone stimulation test for evaluation of nonfunctional pituitary macroadenoma could aid in identifying adrenocorticotrophic hormone-staining pathology yielded large variability and did not allow clinical utility.

Thus, researchers concluded that larger, multicenter research is needed to determine whether this test can be useful.

“As ACTH stimulation tests are performed routinely when evaluating macroadenoma when there is no suspicion for a state of endogenous hypercortisolism, we sought to determine if the test could reliably identify these pathologies during the preoperative evaluation. We hypothesized that patients with subclinical Cushing’s disease or silent ACTH-secreting tumors would have a higher delta cortisol on the ACTH stimulation tests vs. other types of macroadenoma pathologies,” Kevin Pantalone, DO, ECNU, FACE, staff endocrinologist and director of clinical research in the department of endocrinology at Cleveland Clinic, told Endocrine Today.

Pantalone and colleagues performed a retrospective chart review of 148 patients with pituitary macroadenoma who underwent preoperative ACTH stimulation tests, with the goal of determining whether the test can aid in the identification of ACTH-staining pathology.

According to data reported at the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists Annual Scientific and Clinical Congress, the ACTH-staining group had higher mean basal cortisol levels compared with the non-ACTH-staining (P = .012), other staining (P = .018) and the non-staining (P = .012) tumors. The researchers found no significant differences in maximal delta cortisol between the groups.

“While we found basal cortisol levels were higher in patients with ACTH-staining pituitary microadenoma vs. non-ACTH-staining macroadenoma, the large variability in cortisol values did not allow for clinical utility,” Pantalone told Endocrine Today.

“Unfortunately, in the end, our study was limited by the number of cases with ACTH-staining pathology. Thus, we were unable to determine if the ACTH stimulation test could reliably assist clinicians in potentially identifying ACTH-staining pathology in the preoperative setting,” he said. “A multicenter study, affording a large number of ACTH-staining tumors, is needed. This may allow for us to determine if the ACTH-stimulation test can really be clinically useful in preoperatively identifying ACTH-staining pathology.” – by Amber Cox

In adults with adrenal incidentaloma, adiponectin levels may help predict the presence of subclinical Cushing’s disease, according to recent findings.

Asli Dogruk Unal, MD, of the department of endocrinology and metabolism at Memorial Atasehir Hospital in Istanbul, and colleagues analyzed data from 40 patients with adrenal incidentaloma (24 women; mean age, 61 years) and 30 metabolically healthy adults without adrenal adenomas or hyperplasia (22 women; mean age, 26 years). All patients with type 2 diabetes were newly diagnosed and not on any antidiabetic therapies; included patients were not using statin therapy for about 12 weeks.

In two group comparisons, researchers found that only adiponectin level was lower in the subclinical Cushing’s syndrome group vs. the nonfunctional adrenal incidentaloma group (P = .007); there were no observed between-group differences for age, BMI, waist circumference, insulin levels, homeostasis model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) or lipid profiles.

Adiponectin level was negatively associated with insulin level, HOMA-IR, triglyceride level and midnight cortisol level, and was positively associated with body fat percentage, HDL and adrenocorticotropic hormone levels. In linear regression analysis, age was found to be an increasing factor, whereas sex, HOMA-IR, LDL, waist circumference and presence of subclinical Cushing’s syndrome were decreasing factors.

In evaluating the receiver operating characteristic analysis, researchers found that adiponectin level had a predictive value in determining the presence of subclinical Cushing’s syndrome (area under the curve: 0.81; 95% CI, 0.67-0.96). Sensitivity and specificity for an adiponectin value of 13 ng/mL or less in predicting the presence of subclinical Cushing’s syndrome were 87.5% and 77.4%, respectively; positive predictive value and negative predictive value were 50% and 96%, respectively.

“Presence of [subclinical Cushing’s syndrome] should be considered in case of an adiponectin level of 13 ng/mL in [adrenal incidentaloma] patients,” the researchers wrote. “Low adiponectin levels in [subclinical Cushing’s syndrome] patients may be important in treatment decision due to the known relation between adiponectin and cardiovascular events. In order to increase the evidences on this subject, further prospective follow-up studies with larger number of subjects are needed.” – by Regina Schaffer